Atul Gawande, MD, a cancer surgeon at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital and contributor to The New Yorker, took to Twitter to critique the proposed American Health Care Act.
Dr. Gawande expressed his discontent with the AHCA — which the House of Representatives voted to pass in a 217-213 vote Thursday — highlighting how millions of individuals would lose benefits under the proposed bill.
Dr. Gawande tweeted the original bill, which was withdrawn on March 24, would have "cut spending on healthcare programs by $1.2 trillion dollars," "replaced [the] individual mandate with 30 percent premium surcharge if you have a 63 day gap in coverage" and "provided a $900M tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent," among other issues.
He continued: "The amended bill would still do all that but also let states opt out of [pre-existing] protections and basic benefit standards … The GOP is pushing a bill that, as [New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos] put it, 'no one would ever propose as a sane solution to the problems [with] Obamacare' … The AHCA makes every measure of U.S. health and healthcare worse by shifting ~$1 trillion from [the] bottom 40 percent to [the] top 2 percent. It is unconscionable."
To view Dr. Gawande's tweets in full, click here.